‘Why didn’t you telephone?’

‘Well, that’s the thing, I never had a chance, because – well, it’s quite a complicated story, but it all started with somebody’s hat …’ She was half laughing, just from nerves; Noel’s expression was that of a hanging judge. ‘… You see, we’d just got back to Brighton Station when they made an announcement—’

But Noel, hearing only the laugh, had already jerked the pan from the stove.

‘I have to go,’ he said, not looking at Vee. From the corner of his eye he could see that Mr Jepson had entered the kitchen.

‘Go where?’ asked Vee.

‘It’s not actually any of your business,’ said Noel, walking past Mr Jepson and into the hall, taking his duffel coat from the hook, and opening the front door, something that took a couple of tries, since it was rarely used and the wood always swelled in the winter. Outside, it was bright and sharp, the sky wiped clean by the rain, a female blackbird poking around on the front lawn.

‘Noel!’ called Vee, from the hall, but he marched straight along the front path, startling the blackbird, unlatching the gate with such force that he skinned a knuckle, and slamming it with ferocity behind him. Funny; she’d thought it was funny. Last night, he’d played three more games of chess and then had rearranged all the books on the drawing-room shelves in alphabetical order, before getting dressed and walking along the lane in the moonlight, owls twitting, another V-2 exploding somewhere out west, ignorant armies clashing by night all over Europe and North Africa, everything split, fractured, missing, irreparable, and then he’d turned back to see dawn breaking over Highgate in the usual way, a streak of khaki-yellow like a wiped nose, and had gone home to begin on the lodgers’ breakfast, and while he’d been spooning the tea into the pot it had occurred to him that if Vee were dead – and he knew she might be dead, he couldn’t pretend it wasn’t possible, unspeakable things happened all the time – she would probably want a Methodist funeral, a ceremony about which he knew nothing whatsoever; a knitted coffin cover, probably, and a tombola to choose the hymn numbers, and a plot with a wooden marker at the new end of Highgate Cemetery, the bit that looked like a corner of a school playing-field. And then, just as he was placing a jar of her favourite Virginia stocks on the newly filled grave, in she’d waltzed, laughing, and his stomach, which had felt like a knotted balloon since the previous afternoon, had untwisted itself and he’d tasted acid. He could still taste it an hour later, arriving at the Victoria and Albert Museum ten minutes before opening time. There was already a queue: three matelots, a very old lady carrying a string bag filled with stained newspapers, and a naval officer. Simeon.

‘You’ve hurt your foot,’ said Mr Jepson, from the hall. Vee closed the front door and looked down at herself. Her left ankle sagged like bread dough over the top of her shoe, the stocking laddered in three places.